Somali gunmen shot dead a peace activist and kidnapped a senior United Nations official, while a roadside bomb killed three policemen in the anarchic Horn of Africa country, witnesses said on Sunday.
In Beledweyne, central Somalia, assailants assassinated the regional head of respected local non-governmental organisation Centre for Research and Dialogue.
"Men armed with pistols killed Mohamed Hassan Kulmiye in front of a cafeteria," said resident Ismail Farah.
"They shot several bullets in the head. He died on the spot. The men ran away and we do not know who they were."
Suspicion for assassinations and kidnappings generally falls on clan militia and Islamist insurgents who are fighting the Somali government and their Ethiopian military allies.
On Saturday, gunmen also kidnapped the local head of the U.N. refugee agency in Mogadishu in the latest in a spate of abductions of aid workers.
Ten assailants raided the home of Hassan Mohamed Ali, a Somali who runs the agency's operations around Mogadishu, in Elasha, 11 miles south of the capital, residents said.
"They broke into his house after exchanging gunfire with his guards and took him with them," resident Farah Abdi told Reuters. "We see stains of blood in front of his house but we do not know who the kidnappers were and where he is held now."
Kidnapping is lucrative business in Somalia and hostages are generally treated well in anticipation of a large ransom.
Gunmen are still holding four foreign aid workers - two Italians, a Kenyan, a Briton - and three Somalis abducted in April and May.
"We demand the immediate and unconditional release of Hassan Mohamed Ali," said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, who returned on Saturday from a three-day mission to Kenya that focused on Somalia's dramatic humanitarian situation.
